Power in the Blood (85 page)

“Are you a hauler, Smith?”

“Oh, I am that, yessir.”

“And what is it, might I ask, that you haul?”

“Shit.”

“Ah, yes—shit.”

“Nightsoil Smith, I’m called. Haul away the shit from everyone’s can—well, not everyone, but plenty. I make a living, good living at it.” He passed the bottle again and they shared its dregs before approaching the shack. “Winnie, that’s my woman, she can go get her own dang drink.”

Passing through the doorway, Nevis found the odor unabated within, and decided to breathe through his mouth until such time as Smith’s hospitality ceased and he could leave. The shack’s interior was furnished with what appeared to be cast-off tables and chairs and cabinets, and the woman in domestic reign appeared herself to be one of society’s castoffs. Although young, she had about her face the lines and shadows of middle age, and she did not look kindly upon the guest.

“Who’s this?”

“Donovan,” Smith told her.

“Dunnigan,” Nevis corrected.

“What’s he want?”

“You just wipe that look off of your face and be polite when I bring a friend home, you hear?”

Winnie turned away from them both and left the room, slamming a door behind her.

“She gets that way,” Smith explained. “Don’t mind her.”

“No offense taken,” Nevis assured him.

“There’ll be grub; just sit yourself down.”

Smith joined Winnie in what Nevis presumed was the bedroom. A pot simmered on the corner stove, tantalizing his nostrils. Nevis thought it might be stew, but the smell was difficult to identify, overwhelmed as it was by septic waftings from the stable. His garbage pickings of the afternoon had not fully satisfied the man within, and Nevis became impatient for supper; it was all very well for a stranger to invite him home after sharing a drink, but he saw no reason to place a man within sniffing distance of food and not dish up a bowlful immediately.

He approached the stove; definitely stew. Smith and Winnie were arguing behind the door, and rather than wait for a possible throwing-out if the woman won, Nevis picked up a greasy ladle and began scooping stew into his mouth. It burned his tongue and gums with exquisite fire, and he made small whimpering sounds of pleasure as taste overcame pain and his body begged for more. He managed to ingest several scoopings before the argument ceased and he was obliged to replace the ladle as he had found it. Nevis had time to wipe his chin before his hosts returned.

“Smells good,” said Smith, rubbing his hands together.

Winnie began smacking bowls onto the table, and the men sat down to await her serving, Smith tipping Nevis a broad wink to let him know all was well. Soon all three were noisily eating. Smith ordered bread to go with the stew, and Winnie fetched it without a word. She had not spoken at all since leaving the bedroom.

“Come to Glory Hole for a reason?” Smith asked.

“My health,” said Nevis. “I heard the mountain air takes years off a fellow’s life, and I do so yearn to be a child again.”

Smith stared at him for several seconds, then howled and slapped the table. “Hear that, Winnie? Hear what he said? A child again!”

Winnie glared at Nevis and bit into her bread.

“Men are children anyway,” she said.

“Oh, you just need a drink,” Smith chided. “Hell, I reckon we children do too, don’t we, Donovan?”

“Dunnigan. Call me Nevis, please.”

“Nevis? Well, all right, if you want me to.”

Smith went outside with a promise to return momentarily.

“He hides it,” said Winnie. “He thinks I don’t know where, but I do.”

“I see.”

“You don’t see a thing. What kind of work do you do?”

“I used to be a painter, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, this place never saw a lick. Want to paint it? He can pay you, even if he looks like he couldn’t. He saves it up and hides it away, every cent.”

“Not that kind; a picture painter. An artist.” He groaned, reminded of his former self. It was strange, he thought, that he should want to impress the drab thing across the table.

“Oh, that kind. You can paint my picture, then.”

“I don’t have my materials anymore; I’m sorry.”

Winnie got up and fetched a stub of pencil and a creased sheet of paper with a jumble of scribbled figures on one side. She turned it over and presented both to Nevis.

“Show me.”

“Very well. Sit, please.”

Smith came inside with a bottle and sat down to uncork it before noticing the event taking place at the table.

“What’s this?”

“He’s an artist, he says, so he can just prove it.”

“Artist?”

“I’ll draw you too, if you like, Smith.”

“Draw a picture of me? Hell, no one ever done that before. Had a camera picture one time, but I lost it.”

“Cameras are machines. I am an artist. This pencil is not at all suitable.”

“It’s all we got.”

Nevis completed the sketch and showed it to Winnie. The change that came over her features was startling, and for a moment Nevis saw how very young she was.

“He really is …! Look!”

She thrust the paper at Smith, who took his time staring at it. “Looks like you, all right,” he admitted.

“It’s exactly how I am!”

Nevis had softened the lines bordering her lips and erased the dark shadows beneath Winnie’s eyes in his rendering, as a form of politeness toward her; he had even worked a slight wave into her hair, and avoided any suggestion of a poor complexion. Winnie took the portrait back and looked at it again, mesmerized by Nevis’s flattering version of herself. “You really are,” she breathed.

“Thank you. Are there glasses?”

“I’ll get them,” said Winnie, and drifted away from the table, still admiring her sketch.

“You got her to smiling,” admired Smith. “That’s good, she’s a whole different woman when she smiles. Don’t happen often enough. Most of the time it’s spitting and meanness, like a bobcat, but she can be a loving woman when she wants.”

“Oh, you hush,” said Winnie, returning with three cloudy glasses, but her voice was mild.

They began to drink, Winnie taking in as much as the men. Nevis was pressed for his story, and told them of his artistry’s finest flowering.

“Only a brothel, if you’ll excuse the word at your table, Miss Winnie, but a place of class and refinement, probably the finest in Denver; I can’t be sure, not being a man to patronize such establishments. A work of epic proportions it was, with a multitude of studies from nature, as we artists express it; fifty-three, if my memory serves me, and that does not include the animals.”

“There’s animals in the picture too?”

“Yes … dogs and cats here and there, you know, and a donkey eating hay; perfectly innocent behavior.”

“But why didn’t it make you famous?” Winnie asked.

“A sporting house is no gallery. Success such as I found in that venture—and they paid me well, I admit—does not bring further reward in the broader field of artistic endeavor. No, there were no commissions as a result of my efforts there, sad to say, and the money was all too soon gone where money was made to go.”

“That’s a shame,” declared Winnie, fairly drunk by then.

“It is indeed, but I bear no malice. Fate, you see, has conspired against me, and in the face of such daunting opposition, I have bowed my careworn head before the inevitable.”

“So you didn’t come here to make pictures?” Smith asked.

“I came here for no reason at all, my friend, and I expect no reason to sustain me while I am here.”

Smith beamed widely, revealing large green teeth. “I can give you a job, regular work, alongside of me. I need a man, I do. It’s no favor; it’s real work for real wages.”

“He’s a painter, not a shit collector.”

“Well, I know that, stupid, but he needs a job just like anyone else does, to be paying his way till he paints a picture again, see.”

“It’s not his line, is it, Nevis?”

“I have no line anymore.”

“Then you can get a new one, which is what I’m offering, dammit. Are the both of you not seeing straight here? Work is work, that’s the truth of it, and if you don’t do something to get paid for, why then, you’re just a scarecrow without a home, and that’s no good, nossir, not for someone that ain’t crippled and can’t do nothing anyhow, which Nevis ain’t a cripple, are you, Nevis?”

“There are many pathways to failure,” said Nevis grandly.

“That’s what I mean, see; you need a job.”

The conversation pursued an elliptical course, with much shouting and not a little laughter. When the bottle finally was emptied, all three felt they were the oldest of friends, and the last secret between them was placed on the table alongside the bottle when Winnie left to relieve herself. “Used to be a whore down Leadville way,” confided Smith, “but she’s got a good nature if you stay on the right side of her. I’d be a lonely man, I reckon, without my Winnie, and I don’t care who knows.”

“A charming companion,” agreed Nevis. “You’re a lucky fellow, Smith.”

“That I am, and so’re you.” Smith winked.

“To be sure.”

“No, you are, same as me. She likes you. We’re lucky, the both of us, see. I let her, so don’t you be worried.”

Failing to understand, Nevis smiled and nodded, and saluted Winnie on her return. “Hail, Winifred, queen among women, morning bloom of femalekind … and pretty besides!”

Her face became flushed beneath its coating of grime as Winnie gave him a curious smile and took herself into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Smith winked again. “Give her a minute. Bottle’s gone anyway. Need to piss?”

“I believe I do, yes.”

They went out together and pissed twin streams beneath a full moon. “Over there,” said Smith, pointing to the outhouse. “For shitting, if you need to.”

“Not at the moment.”

“Just so’s you know where. That one, that’s always the first to get emptied when I do my rounds. Start at home, I do, and work all around town and come back, that’s after I dump the honey, a course.”

“Naturally. A man shouldn’t bring his work home with him, now should he.”

Smith chuckled pleasantly. “You’re a funny feller, you are. We can work together, and you can stay here with us, I know she won’t make no fuss. She likes you, see, so there’s the extra thing to make you jump at the chance, all right?”

“All right.”

“Good. She’ll be ready now.”

“Ready?”

“For us, you know?”

Nevis began to feel there was something in the relationship spelled out by Smith that had not been explained fully enough, but he was too drunk to attempt making sense of it. He followed his new employer inside the shack and through to the bedroom before becoming aware of his blunder.

“Excuse me, Smith … Winnie.… Uh, where shall I sleep—would you mind showing me?”

Smith shook his head, laughing softly, and began shedding his clothes. “No need to be shy,” he said. “We’re all of us God’s creatures that he made, as my granny said.”

“She wasn’t thinking about what you’re thinking about, though,” said Winnie, her face barely visible above the comforter of the room’s only bed.

“That she wasn’t,” Smith agreed, “but then, she was an old lady, with her thinkings behind her.”

Winnie giggled and flung the covers aside for him to get beneath. Nevis caught a glimpse of her nakedness, and Smith’s, and did not know what to do.

“Get them duds off and turn out the lamp, why don’t you, Nevis.”

“I … uh …, is this my bed too?”

“Ain’t no other, is there, Win?”

“No other at all. Don’t be all night over there.”

Nevis began unbuttoning his shirt, aware of the inner quaking he wished would go away. At the age of twenty-nine, he was about to lose his virginity to an ex-whore, in the close presence of a shitcan emptier. It was not the tableau of romantic conquest he had once been in the habit of picturing for himself, but in the harsher light of waning expectations, the faces and opportunity turned toward him were the finest there could be.

Working with Nightsoil Smith drove Nevis deeper into the arms of his new companions, since their odor became his, and he was made unwelcome in the usual haunts of drinkers. Offended by the reaction to his aroma, Nevis drew away from society and found company enough with Smith and Winnie. They brought their liquor from a store with a window through which Smith could be seen from within; bottles were brought outside and cash quickly changed hands. “They give me a good price too,” bragged Smith, “because of two reasons, which the first one is I’m a regular customer which they like, and the second reason is I said I’d come right inside the store if I ain’t happy with the charge, see, so they keep me sweet the way I like, and they’ll do the same for you on account of you’re my partner now.”

Nights in Winnie’s double bed were drunken, orgiastic and remarkably amiable, given the conflicting temperaments of the participants. Nevis grew to realize, as the weeks passed, that he had become a happy man. It was such an unlikely sensation that he treated it as a man would a basket of fragile eggs, anxious for its preservation while anticipating its end. One evening he went so far as to declare that the man and woman who had saved him from celibacy and a life without hope were the finest human beings he could ever have wished to encounter in this or any other life. Three-fourths of the way through a bottle, all three broke down and cried.

“We love you, Nevis,” sobbed Winnie.

“And I love you,” he bawled, “both of you.”

Winnie allowed the men simultaneous access to her body shortly after this declaration, as a means of cementing the bond each held dear.

Nightsoil Smith’s work as driver and loader of a honey cart did not occupy all of his working day, especially after he had Nevis to assist him in the retrieval and emptying of shitcans from the back alleys of Glory Hole. “This line of work ain’t gonna last forever,” he advised his partner. “Leo Brannan, he says he’s gonna put that newfangled plummery in every house and building in town, and that’ll be the end of the honey cart.”

“Plumbing, it’s called.”

“Once the plummery’s inside everyplace, it’s the end of the line for you and me, doing what we do, so it’s a good thing there’s the other line.”